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Arabic Short Stories
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173 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1984
About the author
Denys Johnson-Davies
100 books50 followersDenys Johnson-Davies (Arabic: دنيس جونسون ديڤيز) (1922-2017) was an eminent Arabic-to-English literary translator who has translated, inter alia, several works by Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, Sudanese author Tayeb Salih, Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish and Syrian author Zakaria Tamer.
Davies, referred to as “the leading Arabic-English translator of our time” by the late Edward Said, has translated more than twenty-five volumes of short stories, novels, plays, and poetry, and was the first to translate the work of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. He is also interested in Islamic studies and is co-translator of three volumes of Prophetic Hadith. He has also written a number of children’s books adapted from traditional Arabic sources, including a collection of his own short stories, Fate of a Prisoner, which was published in 1999.
Born in 1922 in Vancouver Canada to English parentage, Davies spent his childhood in Sudan, Egypt, Uganda, and Kenya, and then was sent to England at age 12. Davies studied Oriental languages at Cambridge, and has lectured translation and English literature at several universities across the Arab World. In 2006, he published his memoirs. In 2007, he was awarded the Sheikh Zayed Book Award "Culture Personality of the Year", a valued at about $300,000.
Davies lives in and divides his time between Marrakesh and Cairo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denys_Jo...
Davies, referred to as “the leading Arabic-English translator of our time” by the late Edward Said, has translated more than twenty-five volumes of short stories, novels, plays, and poetry, and was the first to translate the work of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. He is also interested in Islamic studies and is co-translator of three volumes of Prophetic Hadith. He has also written a number of children’s books adapted from traditional Arabic sources, including a collection of his own short stories, Fate of a Prisoner, which was published in 1999.
Born in 1922 in Vancouver Canada to English parentage, Davies spent his childhood in Sudan, Egypt, Uganda, and Kenya, and then was sent to England at age 12. Davies studied Oriental languages at Cambridge, and has lectured translation and English literature at several universities across the Arab World. In 2006, he published his memoirs. In 2007, he was awarded the Sheikh Zayed Book Award "Culture Personality of the Year", a valued at about $300,000.
Davies lives in and divides his time between Marrakesh and Cairo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denys_Jo...
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 25, 2021
This book was published in 1983 and contained 24 stories by the same number of writers. Half of them were from Egypt, and the rest from 10 other Arab countries. There was nothing from the countries of the Arab peninsula. Two women were included, Lebanon’s Hanan al-Shaykh and Egypt’s Alifa Rifaat. Information on the specific year of publication for most of the stories was lacking, but they appeared to date mostly from the 1970s.
From 1994, editions of the book contained an enlightening introduction to the development of the modern short story in the Arab world, written by the scholar Roger Allen. Roughly speaking, he described the decades up to the 1940s as a period of the genre’s emergence in connection with journalism, often reflecting a romantic sensibility, and development along the lines of French and Russian models.
The 1940s and 50s were described as a move away from romanticism toward a naturalistic form of realism, in which the short story was used frequently as a means of social criticism, with some degree of optimism prevailing. Writing in the 1960s reflected an increasing sense of alienation, stemming from the failure of political systems, heightened repression and the consequences of defeat in the 1967 war. Many writers shifted to more allusive, surreal and symbolic narratives to reflect their sense of a fragmented, illogical reality, with the trend continuing into the 1970s. At the same time, the later decades saw the increasing prominence of female writers. Allen’s introduction also included a bibliography of other anthologies and translations of individual authors.
Stories enjoyed included “Small Sun” by Syria’s Zakaria Tamer, a parable-like tale of a man whose greed and hopes led him to approach a djinn and suffer the consequences. “Another Evening at the Club” by Alifa Rifaat, about a pampered wife whose maid had to endure the effects of anxiety about her marriage. “The Persian Carpet” by Lebanon’s Hanan al-Shaykh, about a sensitive girl’s meeting with her divorced mother and an unhappy memory caused by the sight of a carpet. “The Chair Carrier” by Yusuf Idris, in which a modern-day resident of Cairo encountered a specter from the Pharaonic age who refused to put down the burden given him long ago by his master. “Flower Crazy” by Morocco’s Mohammed Chukri, mainly a series of weakly related vignettes from a woman’s day that nevertheless were filled with vivid images and pungent sensations. And “The Slave Fort” by Palestine’s Ghassan Kanafani, about the narrator’s trip to the seaside, where he met an unfortunate man and pondered the years of a man’s life. Another piece, “Glimpses from the Life of Maugoud Abdul Maugoud and Two Postscripts,” by Yusuf Sharouni, though hardly enjoyable, was interesting for its relentless plotting of the inward path taken by a narrator estranged from himself and happiness, with conflicting feelings of guilt and innocence, who might have committed several crimes.
Many of the other stories either were far too allusive, surreal or symbolic for me to understand or were relatively straightforward but just didn’t capture my imagination. If this had been otherwise, I would’ve rated the book more highly.
Twelve of the stories in this collection have been included in the much larger Anchor Book of Modern Arabic Fiction, published in 2006 by the same translator, Denys Johnson-Davies.
From 1994, editions of the book contained an enlightening introduction to the development of the modern short story in the Arab world, written by the scholar Roger Allen. Roughly speaking, he described the decades up to the 1940s as a period of the genre’s emergence in connection with journalism, often reflecting a romantic sensibility, and development along the lines of French and Russian models.
The 1940s and 50s were described as a move away from romanticism toward a naturalistic form of realism, in which the short story was used frequently as a means of social criticism, with some degree of optimism prevailing. Writing in the 1960s reflected an increasing sense of alienation, stemming from the failure of political systems, heightened repression and the consequences of defeat in the 1967 war. Many writers shifted to more allusive, surreal and symbolic narratives to reflect their sense of a fragmented, illogical reality, with the trend continuing into the 1970s. At the same time, the later decades saw the increasing prominence of female writers. Allen’s introduction also included a bibliography of other anthologies and translations of individual authors.
Stories enjoyed included “Small Sun” by Syria’s Zakaria Tamer, a parable-like tale of a man whose greed and hopes led him to approach a djinn and suffer the consequences. “Another Evening at the Club” by Alifa Rifaat, about a pampered wife whose maid had to endure the effects of anxiety about her marriage. “The Persian Carpet” by Lebanon’s Hanan al-Shaykh, about a sensitive girl’s meeting with her divorced mother and an unhappy memory caused by the sight of a carpet. “The Chair Carrier” by Yusuf Idris, in which a modern-day resident of Cairo encountered a specter from the Pharaonic age who refused to put down the burden given him long ago by his master. “Flower Crazy” by Morocco’s Mohammed Chukri, mainly a series of weakly related vignettes from a woman’s day that nevertheless were filled with vivid images and pungent sensations. And “The Slave Fort” by Palestine’s Ghassan Kanafani, about the narrator’s trip to the seaside, where he met an unfortunate man and pondered the years of a man’s life. Another piece, “Glimpses from the Life of Maugoud Abdul Maugoud and Two Postscripts,” by Yusuf Sharouni, though hardly enjoyable, was interesting for its relentless plotting of the inward path taken by a narrator estranged from himself and happiness, with conflicting feelings of guilt and innocence, who might have committed several crimes.
Many of the other stories either were far too allusive, surreal or symbolic for me to understand or were relatively straightforward but just didn’t capture my imagination. If this had been otherwise, I would’ve rated the book more highly.
Twelve of the stories in this collection have been included in the much larger Anchor Book of Modern Arabic Fiction, published in 2006 by the same translator, Denys Johnson-Davies.
May 22, 2020
I'm not a lover of short stories; however, this book gives the reader a nice array of top Arabic writers and their stories. The stories give an Eastern view of life in Arab countries- many joyful, but always with an undercurrent of sadness. The stories are interesting as we peek into slices of life. A good introduction to Arabic writers and an excellent translation.
August 11, 2021
It's interesting to see what's being written in other parts of the world. Solid collection.
December 10, 2015
Ho-hum collection of short stories with a couple that stand out.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews